SHAPIRO, BERNARD

SHAPIRO, BERNARD (1935– ), Canadian educator, administrator, public servant. Bernard Shapiro was born in Montreal. In 1954 he graduated from McGill University with a B.A., after which he and his twin brother, Harold, took over for several years the management of the family's popular restaurant in Montreal, Ruby Foo's. He and his brother left Montreal to pursue higher degrees. Bernard earned a doctorate in education from Harvard in 1967 and was hired by the University of Boston. He was appointed an associate dean at Boston before returning to Canada as dean of education at the University of Western Ontario and later vice president academic and provost. From 1980 to 1986 he was director of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. In 1985 he headed a provincial Commission on Private Schools in Ontario which, among its recommendations, called for partial provincial funding of Jewish and other religious schools. This recommendation was never implemented.

In 1986 Shapiro was appointed Ontario's deputy minister of education and held several other major deputy minister posts before he retired from the Ontario public service in 1992 to become a professor of education and public policy at the University of Toronto. Shapiro returned to Montreal as principal of McGill University in 1994, a position he held until 2002. He also oversaw the American National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) review process before its release by the United Jewish Communities. In 2004 Shapiro began a five-year term as ethics commissioner of Canada, responsible for the administration of the code of conduct for members of the House of Commons as well as the prime minister's ethical guidelines for cabinet ministers and other public office holders.

Active in the Montreal Jewish and non-Jewish communities, in 2004 Shapiro and his wife, Phyllis, a professor of education at McGill University, were Montreal's Negev Dinner honorees. In 1999 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.